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Tucker Carlson Will Emerge Stronger, and That Should Worry Us [1]

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Date: 2023-04-26  

Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ chief propagandist and the high priest for Trump’s Big Lie, was fired this week by Rupert Murdoch. His firing comes in the wake of Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for airing election conspiracy theories. In his time at Fox, he became its most watched host, becoming perhaps the most powerful TV personality in America, so powerful that Republican politicians constantly fought for his approval. For many who have watched aghast at the January 6 lies, pro-white supremacy vitriol, and anti-LGBTQ rights propaganda spewing out his mouth night after night, his firing feels like a relief. However, that relief may prove to be short-lived. We could be about to see Carlson at his most powerful.

The typical reaction from our friends has to be to applaud and celebrate. For example, the audience at The View all shouted “GOODBYE” and waved , as they saw off an enemy. However, it would be foolish to imagine that he will simply go gently into the night. The internet has presented creators with the opportunity to reach their audience directly, without the need of a medium such as Fox News. It will be easy for Carlson to host a podcast on Spotify or YouTube or Sirius, on a mega-money deal, and take his audience with him.

Look, Joe Rogan reaches an audience of 11 million viewers per podcast episode, and that is far more than Carlson, who, as the biggest host on cable news, reached 3.5 million viewers a night. There is no reason to believe that the most powerful and famous TV host in the country cannot build a following off of Fox News. I would even argue that, without the constraints of operating at Fox News, his followers will see more of the “real Tucker Carlson” and that will make him even more viral. That should scare us, because Carlson was responsible for mainstreaming Infowars, white nationalist communities, Replacement Theory, and various other fringe conspiracy theories. This is a man who described management as a bunch of “incompetent liberals”. If he thinks they are liberals, and he felt constrained by them, who knows what he will say and what and who he will platform when he is left alone?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/26/2166012/-Tucker-Carlson-Will-Emerge-Stronger-and-That-Should-Worry-Us

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